LEES: A presidential Q and A -- asked and answered

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

I’ve been asking myself, ever since I heard the news that the Egyptian military overthrew the government of Mohammed Morsi, if I thought that was a good thing. I decided to pose that question and others in this week’s commentary.

Was the Egyptian military’s forced removal of Mohammed Morsi as Egypt’s president a good thing?

My immediate gut reaction was – yes, we can’t tolerate intolerance. Morsi has been involved with the Muslim Brotherhood, and he seems to have rammed though a constitution that was very Islamist. He claimed extraordinary powers for himself. And his views on 9/11 and Israel are bizarre. The Egyptian military has kept the peace agreement with Israel in place. I don’t think Morsi and his supporters could be trusted to do that.

So I am opposed to religious extremists being in charge, anywhere whether it be Egypt, Iran, or the USA.

On the other hand (Harry Truman famously said he wanted to find a one-handed economist so he wouldn’t have to listen to this phrase), Morsi was democratically elected. He was Egypt’s first ever democratically elected president. I don’t think the run-off election that put him in power with 51 percent of the vote was rigged, although I’m not so sure about the vote that passed Morsi’s pro-Islamist constitution. Had he, by overreaching, forfeited his right to be President, just as Richard Nixon was forced to resign in 1974 to avoid being impeached and found guilty, which would have forced his removal? At least, we had a formal process. We didn’t need the military to step in, thank goodness.

And what if it was someone we felt should not be removed, who was going to be kicked out by the military? For instance, I didn’t approve in the early 1970’s when Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger had the CIA provide covert support to elements in the Chilean military who staged a coup against the democratically elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende, because he was a”Marxist,” “Communist,” and/or “Socialist.” Pick the Cold War term of your choice. Weren’t we opposed to Communists because infamous ones like Stalin were dictators who didn’t believe in democracy or free elections?

There is a tradition in some Muslim countries of the military being a liberal influence against Muslim extremists. Read about the history of Algeria in the 1990’s and the history of Kemal Ataturk in Turkey, back in the 1920’s and 1930’s.

So did the Egyptian military do the right thing? We have the luxury here in the USA of being indecisive, but the Egyptians are living that question. What has happened, has happened. Egypt needs to have a new election soon, and it needs to find a better way (vote of no confidence, impeachment, or whatever) of removing Presidents in the future. Otherwise, we will have taught Muslim fundamentalists that democracy doesn’t work for them.

Sticking with the theme of presidencies, here are two questions about the US presidency.

How many years can you be President of the United States? Very few people know the correct answer. Did you guess eight years? You’d be wrong. The correct answer is ten years. Wait, you say. How could this be? FDR was elected four times - 1932 (versus Herbert Hoover), 1936 (versus Alf Landon), 1940 (versus Wendell Wilkie), and 1944 (versus Tom Dewey).

Wasn’t the Constitution amended to prevent anyone from being elected more than twice? Yes, it was. So, the correct answer must be eight years – right? No, wrong. The key word here is” elected.” So, in 1960 Lyndon Baines Johnson was elected Vice-President. In 1963, JFK was assassinated. LBJ became President on the afternoon of November 22nd, 1963. He ran for President in 1964. He won a four year term. If he wanted to run again in 1968 (which he decided not to do at the last minute), he could have. This is because another four year term would not have increased his total number of years as President to more than ten.

How many USA presidents have been impeached and removed from office by the Senate? Once again, the correct answer can be confusing –none. Two USA Presidents have been impeached (accused) by the House of Representatives (Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton). Both were found not guilty by the Senate, thus they were not removed from office. Andrew Johnson was found not guilty in 1868 by one vote. You can read JFK’s “Profiles in Courage” for details about Andrew Johnson’s case.

How many US Presidents have resigned? One –Richard Nixon, who would clearly have been impeached and found guilty, if he had not resigned.

I have other non-presidential questions such as How can Pennsylvania not approve Medicaid expansion which would cover 600,000 more of our citizens with medical insurance and create somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 new jobs? I’ll have to talk about that in a future commentary.